Tag Archive for: pastor

10 Reminders of Who Your Congregation is in Christ

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As a church leader, do you ever feel like it’s easy to become distracted from how miraculous and powerful our identity in Christ is? We rush about our duties to serve the church, but how often are we reminded to see people for who they truly are? Specifically, for who God says they are?

We can get so preoccupied with making sure the slides are ready for the sermon, the floors have been vacuumed, parents have adequate childcare, and the bathrooms are fully stocked with toilet paper (which, of course, are hold some importance) that we can unintentionally overlook the jaw-dropping, astonishing, and remarkable reality of who we all are in Christ.

To help reorient our hearts for those we lead around these truths, here are 10 reminders of who your congregation is in Christ:

1) They are forgiven.

Not only did they receive forgiveness at the point of salvation, but this forgiveness doesn’t stop there! It is an ongoing event that can never run out. Because they are still being sanctified, they will continue to need and have access to forgiveness.

“For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” – Colossians 1:13-14

2) They are adopted.

This means that they are elevated to a position in God’s family. Like an orphan, they previously had no rights in the family of God but once they were saved they gained access to the benefits of being in the family of God!

“He predestined us for adoption to sonship through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.” – Ephesians 1:5

3) They are Christ’s ambassadors.

Christ has charged believers with being His ambassadors here on earth. That means they have been charged with sharing His light with the world and representing Him. As their shepherd, teacher, and encourager you have been given the responsibility to equip them to do this work.

“We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God.” – 2 Corinthians 5:20

4) They are blessed.

God has blessed His people beyond measure! This is not something He is required to do but that He chooses to do! This isn’t something we have to earn or are rewarded with for good behavior. Your congregation has and is being richly blessed by their heavenly Father.

“Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.” – Ephesians 1:3

5) They are part of the body of Christ.

Just like our human bodies, the body of Christ is made up of unique parts. We have a common mission and have each been given unique talents and roles within that body. Your congregation is to come together with their unique parts to receive mutual encouragement, be made complete, and perform the work that God has for them.

“Now you are the body of Christ, and each one of you is a part of it.” – 1 Corinthians 12:27

6) They are free.

As Christians, it’s important to remember that we were set free! We are no longer held captive by sin and that comes with immense relief and freedom.

“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm, then, and do not let yourselves be burdened again by a yoke of slavery.” – Galatians 5:1

7) They are citizens of Heaven.

As Christians, our hope is not in this life on this earth. We are but foreigners. Our true home is in Heaven and we look forward to knowing we will be there one day!

“But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ…” – Philippians 3:20

8) They are a new creation.

Your congregation is not just given a new identity when they are saved, they ARE a completely new creation. The miraculous work of the cross has made them brand new with new desires and hopes.

“Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here!” – 2 Corinthians 5:17

9 They are a friend of Jesus.

Have you considered the weight of this? The God of the entire universe calls us friends. We are a part of His inner circle and share a bond with each other!

“I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you.” – John 15:15

10 They have direct access to God.

No longer do we have to go through the ritual of the Holy of Holies or rely on a priest to communicate with God for us. Because of the Holy Spirit, we can talk to God as if He was sitting right next to us. He hears His people!

“For through him we have access to the Father by one Spirit.” – Ephesians 2:18

These are just a few reminders of who your congregation is in Christ (there are, of course, much more in Scripture). As church leaders, we have been given a special responsibility to nurture and shepherd the people of God within our care. These truths should be a reminder of how important that task is that God has called us to do!

Consider how you can lead your congregation this week to remind them of these truths. How can you support them in embracing who God says they are? 

Don’t forget that all of these reminders are for you too! Why not go back through the list and swap out “they” for “I” in each of these reminders?

If you don’t have a church management system or are considering switching, you can try One Church Software FREE for 14 days to see all the ways it can help you care for your members, empower your volunteers, and serve your community.

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3 Ways to Promote Consistent Giving at Your Church

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A typical problem churches face is maintaining a consistent stream of funds to support ministry operations. The work of the local church, whether discipling teenagers or providing meals for the homeless, costs money, and if a church struggles to maintain a consistent stream of giving from its members, the work of ministry can be hindered.

How can churches encourage consistent giving from their church members without breaking trust or sounding “greedy,” a common fear of church leaders? Here are a few basic ways to promote consistent giving in the local church:

1. Talk about money outside of giving campaigns.

One of the biggest mistakes churches make is neglecting any talk about generosity, giving, or money outside of specialized fundraising campaigns for new facilities, new ministry opportunities, or other such projects.

A common line churches use is, “This is not about a building…it’s about cultivating generosity in your heart.” Unfortunately, if the only time you’re talking like that on a Sunday morning or in your small groups is when you’re trying to add a new facility, people are probably going to roll their eyes! And more importantly, you’re going to lose trust.

One of the best ways you can cultivate a culture of generosity and consistent giving in your church is to talk about money and generosity regularly so that finances aren’t as taboo a topic as they too often are. God cares about our money and how we spend, invest, or give it, and church leaders should be talking about our relationship with money as a regular part of the discipleship process, whether there’s a fundraising campaign or not.

Make conversations about finances a regular part of your discipleship efforts. You will not only cultivate generous hearts that are more like Christ, but you’ll also see more consistent giving from your church members.

2. Encourage regular service within the local church.

This is an essential but often overlooked point when it comes to encouraging giving. In general, even outside of the church walls, people are more likely to personally invest in projects or efforts with which they are actively involved in some way. Sure, plenty of generous donors give to nonprofits or philanthropic causes with whom they have little personal connection. Still, most small and medium-sized givers will be most faithful and consistent if they have a vested interest and participatory relationship with the recipient of their giving.

A really simple, underrated way to encourage consistent giving at church is to encourage your church members to serve regularly. The more involved they are through serving in the children’s ministry or taking meals to new parents throughout the week, the more likely they will be willing to open their wallets and give.

Two of the resources about which people are most stingy are their time and money. If you can get your church members to loosen their grip on their time and be generous on that front, you are more likely to successfully loosen their grip on their money and encourage them to be generous with it.

Encourage service and watch giving become more consistent.

3. Prioritize electronic giving and monitor it.

More and more people are paying their bills through automatic electronic withdrawals from their bank accounts. The number of people who write checks to pay their bills will only continue to decrease moving into the future. The same is true with church giving. Though church demographics tend to skew older than the average age of a community’s population, the digital financial revolution will hit your church soon if it hasn’t already.

If you hope to encourage regular, consistent giving at church, reliable electronic giving needs to be a top priority. There are seemingly dozens of options available for churches to make electronic giving available to their church members. Whichever option you choose, make sure that user experience is important in your decision-making process. Electronic giving that is difficult to use creates unnecessary friction and could even erode trust in your church members, which will only hinder consistent financial giving.

An extra bonus if the solution you choose makes communication easy with your donors, allows members to give via text, and makes it simple for you to monitor it all!

Consistent financial giving is important in the life of the local church because we should always be growing in generosity as we strive to become more like Christ, and those funds fuel the important ministry in your community and around the world.

Looking for an easy giving solution for your church? Look no further than One Church Giving, Our safe, secure, and fully integrated giving solution. Learn more here.

Want to read more?
– 5 Ways We Should Talk About Money at Church
– 5 Reasons to Consider Text Giving for Your Ministry
– 3 Ways to Encourage Young Families to Give to Your Church

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3 Ways to Encourage Young Families to Give to Your Church

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The generous financial gifts of a local church congregation are the backbone of sustaining a local church. Money and giving are twin topics that are often taboo in a local church, and this can obviously inhibit giving and cripple the financial situation of a ministry. It isn’t very fun to think about, but doing ministry does cost money, and the generous giving of church members is needed if the church is to serve their community in tangible ways.

One of the greatest giving pain points in local churches is encouraging giving among young adults. Research shows young people trust churches and church leaders less than their parents or grandparents did at their age. This lack of trust can often lead to a lack of giving. Then, their lack of giving can hobble the ministry of the local church.

How does a local church encourage young families to give? Here are three practical steps:

1. Make recurring giving simple.

Very practically, churches must make recurring giving as simple as possible. Once upon a time, churches could count on members remembering to bring their tithes via check or cash every week, or perhaps once per month. With the digital revolution and the relatively recent phenomenon of electronic bill paying, few young people (including people well into their 30s and even 40s) carry cash or checks with any regularity. If your church only has physical giving options available, with no opportunity to automate giving electronically, you’re missing out on a lot of potential to make giving easy for this generation.

Young people are much more likely to regularly and generously give to the local church if they have a way to do so electronically. This obviously has nothing to do with the discipline of generosity that should be important to all believers. Not having an opportunity to give to a church through the internet is no excuse for not giving at all. But local church leaders should recognize that friction can be reduced for young people who want to give by providing plenty of opportunity to set up recurring giving via an app or other kind of payment service. This will ensure regular giving from young people.

But how do these people begin to give generously, rather than just consistently? See steps two and three.

2. Make your values, not your programs, the focus of giving.

Church culture changes over time. This is only natural and has happened generationally for hundreds of years. Worship styles change. How people prefer to gather changes. Preaching styles shift. The Word of God and the message of the Gospel stay the same, but all of the contextual pieces around “how to do church” are pretty fluid.

One way these changes have been manifested in our current context is in how young people view church. Evangelical churches in the late-20th and even early 21st centuries were built on programs. Many young families around the turn of the millennium flocked to churches with the coolest children’s programming, the nicest facilities, or the most fun youth ministry. Do many people still choose churches and generously give to churches for these reasons? Most definitely. But the tides are turning away from programs and more toward values and community.

Plenty of statistics abound about how young people make more decisions based on values than generations who have come before. Young people today are more likely to give to your church because of your values than they are because of your programs. Quality church programming became such an integral part of local church ministry that it was almost commoditized—quality church programming could be found anywhere. Now, with a generation of young Christians who have seen some of their most beloved Christian leaders fall out of ministry because of moral failure or even criminal behavior, they are more likely to give generously to a church with whom their values align and who they can trust than a church with the coolest children’s ministry programs or facilities.

That last point, focused on trust, is our third and final step on how to encourage church members to give:

3. Make your church finances and budget transparent.

There is absolutely no reason that church finances and budgets should not be transparent to church members. This doesn’t mean church staff need to project their salaries up on the big screen once a month, but it does mean that church members should have a breakdown on where finances go, so they can make an educated and confident decision as they give.

Church leaders who provide no transparency into how church money is used or how budgets are made have no leg to stand on when it comes to wondering why church members aren’t giving. Young people are more skeptical of church leaders and their authority than any generation in modern history. Church leaders today need to earn the trust and respect of young church members, and when it comes to money, trust and respect is earned with transparency.

Young families will give generously when they realize their values align with the church’s values and when they are assured that the people collecting and spending their money are trustworthy and of Christlike character. Then, churches can encourage frictionless, consistent giving by providing young families with electronic means to set up recurring giving.

Want to read more?
– 5 Ways We Should Talk About Money at Church
– 5 Reasons to Consider Text Giving for Your Ministry

Looking for an easy giving solution for your church? Look no further than One Church Giving, Our safe, secure, and fully integrated giving solution. Learn more here.

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A Word of Encouragement to Pastors in 2021

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Dear Pastor,

What a season we have lived through. You have stood as steady as possible and your church members are starting to trickle back into their “normal” routines. But let’s not forget all that we have been through the last 18 months.

You were suddenly faced with the uncertainty of if you could meet or even if you should.

You’ve had to shoulder the responsibility and weight of keeping your members safe while balancing the toll isolation would take on their souls.

You’ve had to shift to a world of virtual meetings and livestream, likely with little to no experience, equipment, or trained staff.

You’ve had countless conversations that felt like they were a lot less about shepherding someone’s soul, and more about the perspective of politicians and the recommendations of doctors.

When you began meeting in-person again, you noticed every face that wasn’t there. And today, there are still those that have yet to return, if they do at all.

You’ve felt the weight of leading your church in a way that honored Jesus and the call to the gospel, but may be fighting the feeling of personal failure when you see so many believers still fighting amongst ourselves.

You’ve been to all of the funerals but missed all the celebrations.

As you press forward, remember that you also need rest. You also need to be cared for. And instead of looking for the faces that are missing, look instead at the faces that are still there. You have done so much with what felt like so little.

God has given you a special calling to lead these people. And that is not by accident! As you are looking to the future and preparing to face new challenges, remember that God is the one that is equipping you to complete this work. You have what it takes to navigate what’s ahead and to shift your ministry as necessary to best meet the needs of your people.

This work is not easy, but it is the most important work in the world! As you work to serve your church, remember Jesus wants to serve them more. As you love these people, Jesus loves them more. You want to reach lost people; Jesus wants to reach them even more than you do! Jesus is ready to do incredible things in your community and He has chosen you to help do that.

So you may feel discouraged or burnt out going into 2022, but we are here to remind you of your calling. To remind you that this is not the end of the story. That God isn’t done working yet. There is hope and many lost people that He is still calling to Himself.

We believe in you and we are cheering you on! God is still doing a mighty work!

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5 Ways We Should Talk About Money at Church

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Money can be a taboo topic, can’t it? Money has torn families apart. Money has torn businesses apart. Money has torn churches apart. It can be a difficult subject and, because of that, we sometimes avoid it.

But this doesn’t need to be the case!

Given that money is a sensitive subject in churches for any number of reasons—from sin, to past church hurt, or others—we should talk about money at church strategically.

Here are five intentional ways churches can talk about money that lead to openness and Christlikeness rather than fear and sin:

1. We should talk about money frequently.

One of the most common mistakes church leaders make is avoiding talking about money and generosity until it’s time to initiate a building campaign or another kind of fundraising initiative to support the work of the church. This not only hinders consistent giving, but it can inhibit the trust of people in your church. Learning to manage money with wisdom and in accordance with Christian values are important to life and pursuing Christlikeness. Discussions about how to manage money or cultivate a heart of generosity should not be reserved for when one aspect of the ministry needs a new or expanded space.

Obviously, talking about money at church too frequently can hurt trust in another way…by making it sound like all your church cares about is money and gathering money from its people—a fear of many Christians that is all too legitimate.

Talking about money is important. Stay consistent with it. Find a healthy rhythm and balance to keep it at the forefront.

2. We should talk about money without shaming people.

Many churches struggle with church members who consume sermons every week and benefit from the ministries of the church without giving of their time or their money to further the work of the church in the community. It is a sad reality, but this is common, and it should be addressed by church leadership. But handling poor giving and stingy hearts by shaming church members who rarely give or don’t give at all is not the way to approach this difficult situation.

Instead, we need to approach how people give with grace and invitation, just like Jesus did. It’s an opportunity to live a life of generosity. This isn’t forced; it’s an invitation to take a step deeper into their walk with Christ.

3. We should talk about money in relation to discipleship.

Sex and money are two of the most common idols that we humans worship instead of our Creator. Part of the reason we are too afraid to talk about money in relation to our faith is because, deep down, we recognize that we hold on to our money a bit too tightly. How we handle our money is a discipleship issue. Mishandling money by being greedy, cheating people out of money we owe them, or other issues like those are spiritual problems, not just ethical or moral problems.

The sooner we start treating our relationship with money as a discipleship issue and not just a “money” issue, the sooner we will start handling our money in a more Christlike, God-glorifying way…and the sooner we’ll be generous with the money we’ve been given.

When church leaders talk about money, it is imperative they lead their people to see their relationship with their money as a matter of spiritual concern. This leads people to understand that money is to be handled with great care because it is so intertwined with their worship.

4. We should talk about money in our children’s and student ministries.

Adults give the most money to the local church, so it is only natural that church conversations about money tend to focus on how adults can be more generous with their money. But because our relationship with our money is a discipleship matter, not just a financial matter, church leaders should be sure that the topic of money makes a regular appearance in children’s and student ministry curricula as well.

Because the church is called to lead children and young adults to have the mind of Christ and pursue godliness in all aspects of life, the church should educate its young people on how to handle money in accordance with their young faith.

Just because young people can’t give very much doesn’t mean we shouldn’t teach them the value of generosity!

5. We should talk about money with eternity in mind.

This point has been hinted at in passing throughout this post, but to wrap it up, let’s reiterate: Our relationship with our money is a discipleship matter, which means our relationship with our money is a matter of eternal importance. By God’s grace, those of us who trust in the finished work of Jesus Christ are saved by Him and what He has done for us. But this gracious salvation does not exempt us from opening our hands and giving back to God those dollars which He gave us in the first place.

God sacrificed His Son so that we might know Him and come to salvation, spending eternity with Him in His presence. In return, we can entrust Him with our finances by pursuing the life of generosity He calls us to.

Leaders, let’s be generous. Let’s encourage a culture of generosity in our churches. And let’s not be afraid to talk about money in the church.

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4 Things Churches Must Get Right with Digital (pt 1) – Website

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You have between five and 10 seconds to get people focused on who you are and what you are all about. That’s right – between five and 10 seconds. Just to put things into perspective, Krispy Kreme recommends you warm its glazed donuts in the microwave for eight seconds for that “hot donuts now” experience.

Most traffic to your church website is from potential visitors and newcomers. Your site is a virtual welcome center, open 24/7/365. I’ll define a “visitor” as someone who has only been inside your church three or fewer times. Visitors make decisions and form opinions about your church based on the information they see online. Often times, they ask themselves, “Will I/my family fit in?” So, ask yourself, why do people come to our website?

WEBSITES FOR CHURCHES AND MINISTRIES SHOULD FOCUS ON THE FOLLOWING:

  1. Who you are and what you are all about should be clear.
    Do you have a lot of young families in your church? Are you an ethnically diverse church? What is your worship style? Contemporary or traditional? What is your theology? You want visitors to know all about your church within seconds of being on your website. Subconsciously, they will form opinions about whether or not they will fit in based solely on your homepage content and images. If you have a contemporary worship style, don’t show a picture of an organ. And don’t show pictures of a bunch of young kids if your church represents an older demographic. Make content a true representation of your church.
  2. Communicate where you are.
    It’s great to tell people in your community all about your church, your mission, vision and values, but if it’s hard for people to find where you’re located, chances are they’re going to stop searching. Make that information easy to find, possibly in a couple of places within your site.
  3. Tell people when to be there.
    If you tell people who you are, what you’re all about, and where you are, but forget to tell them when to be there, how will they know when to come? Make service times a priority just as much as location, even including service times under your address. I’ve seen several churches that have images scrolling on their homepages where one image is dedicated solely to the current sermon series and when to be there. Make people want to come. Tell them when to be there.
  4. Content is key.
    Whatever you decide to include about who you are and what your church is all about is up to you, but keep it simple. Don’t overload people with a ton of useless information. Also, make sure that you are choosing images that correspond to the content on your website. Images solicit emotional responses. Again, people form opinions subconsciously based on what they see
    on your website.

Author: Matt Morris 

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